‘Sharemarket investors getting excited about the growth strategies of President-elect Donald Trump could do with being reminded that growth doesn’t drive stocks higher, earnings and interest rates do. Contrary to what sounds logical, growth does not have to be booming to produce solid gains in the stock market. Take a look at the performance of global sharemarkets over the past eight years since the worst of the global financial crisis. Rather than growth, it has been all the cheap money, and nothing much else, given the earnings reported during that time, that has been really driving shares higher.’